Strictly Come Dancing professional Amy Dowden has given her first newspaper interview since being diagnosed with breast cancer aged just 32 and said the thought of the tumour inside her made her feel "disgusting". Speaking just days after she had two tumours and three further cancer “specks”, plus some lymph nodes, removed from her right breast, the Strictly star told the Mirror that she was finally beginning to feel like Amy again.
The Caerphilly-born star received the devastating diagnosis in May after returning from her honeymoon with her husband Ben Jones. Earlier this month, she shared a picture of her in hospital saying she was "ready to fight". That was just before she went under the knife.
Now back at home in the West Midlands, she said: "The cancer is in the lab now, which is the most important thing. The hardest time was waiting for surgery, thinking ‘I have cancer inside me’. You’re thinking ‘It’s grade three, what if it’s spreading, what if it spreads tonight?’ The feeling of it made me feel disgusted, disgusting. That’s the time I was randomly crying, emotional. But we drove away and I thought, ‘It’s gone’. I’m a doer, I feel we have done something.”
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She will have to wait until next week before she gets her histology report to tell her what stage her cancer is at, and if it has spread. Only then will she know what treatment is needed. Doctors managed to reconstruct her breast, inserting a small implant as part of her three-hour surgery on Wednesday, June 8. For more showbiz and television stories get our newsletter here.
She admitted: "I haven’t looked, I’m waiting for the bruising and swelling to go down. I don’t want to shock or upset myself. I wasn’t able to use my own tissue because they said there wasn’t enough. But they had been worried it might be too bruised and they would need to put an expander in.
“Normally you have breast tissue, fat and skin but they said I had no fat."
She joked that before she went for surgery, her husband Ben said to her boob "Nice knowing you". That’s "so Ben" she added.
The dancer also lives with Crohn’s Disease, an inflammatory bowel condition first experienced when she was 11, and flare-ups can result in hospital treatment. She was afraid of feeling severely ill from the anaesthetic.
“I was really nervous before and I was in a lot of pain when I came round, and sick, and freezing,” she said. “But since having my drains taken out I have coped well. Every day has got better in terms of soreness. I think how quickly I have felt myself again has made me feel more positive.”
Even so, there is still a 50/50 chance that Amy will need radiotherapy only, or chemotherapy too. A Crohn’s flare-up could make the latter difficult. And because her mum also faced breast cancer, albeit older, aged 51, Amy has been tested for the BRCA gene. If that is positive, placing her at higher risk, she will face a second mastectomy.
Being just 32 also means she has to consider her fertility options, as the cancer drugs will affect her ability to conceive. Amy doesn't hide from the fact about wanting children. She and Ben, with whom she won the British National Latin Dance Championships, had already begun planning. First, they were going to extend their house - the builders have now been postponed - and then she dearly wanted a family.
“It will be another thing to put on hold,” she said. "We run a dance school with lots of little girls and boys, I’m a dancing mum already." She added that doctors had promised to do everything they could to "give it their best shot".
It was only last year that Amy started checking her breasts prompted by a trek with the breast cancer charity Coppafeel!, organised by Giovanna Fletcher, the wife of McFly’s Tom who was Amy’s 2021 Strictly partner. The charity saved her life, she added. Doctors said discovery just three months later could have resulted in a “very different story”. She revealed the tumour was so virulent it “doubled in size” between her scans alone.
Even so, Amy said nothing to Ben during their honeymoon nor when she made a GP appointment back home. She even went to her emergency referral alone. But nurses told her she needed someone.
“They told me it looked suspicious of cancer - 50-95% chance,” she recalled. “I think Ben was a bit in denial, he thought it was going to be benign. Mr Positive.”
Despite carrying on as normal as they waited for a week, performing in two dance shows, a phone call days later confirmed the worst.
“Then I had a phone call to say we needed to speak to the doctor in person and you just knew then," she said. "I just wanted to know, what’s the plan."
Her anger is barely concealed: “I’ve had enough to deal with in my life with my Crohn’s," she said. "It’s not fair."
For now, her immediate mission is to stop this happening to anyone else: "I’ve had so many messages from women who have started checking,” she explained. “Even if ten people start, I’ll have done my job.”
For more information about breast health awareness visit coppafeel.org
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